


Man With A Plan

by Merkwerkee



Series: Being Bruno Hamilton [34]
Category: Masters of the Metaverse
Genre: "covert ops", s6 e5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:28:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22854733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merkwerkee/pseuds/Merkwerkee
Summary: Bruno takes some time to reflect on the latest Metaverse they're in, and his relationship with his granddaughter
Series: Being Bruno Hamilton [34]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1643020





	Man With A Plan

Bruno looked down at Sgt. Wazacowski’s hands as Wells expertly guided the plane up off the tarmac and into the deep indigo sky.

Sergeant Baxter Wazacowski. It’d been more than a decade since he’d been a sergeant, yet the rank fit like a glove. Unlike the turbulent Michael, Wazacowski was focused, his world centering on the mission and the objectives. Bruno could appreciate the clarity of purpose so very like his own. Granted, in this case it was tempered by an almost overwhelming urge to smite the unnatural beings inhabiting the cargo hold around him, but Bruno’d done plenty of missions with guys he didn’t like and knew exactly how to redirect the feeling into something productive.

Still, the sense of satisfaction at a job well done was a warmth in his heart that he hadn’t felt since the Diner fell in. Not only had they thoroughly torched the lab and fulfilled Wazacowski ’s primary objective, they’d also managed to collar - literally - TOM and satisfy Bruno’s primary mission objective. And they’d gotten to kill Nazis, always a plus; nothing quite like unambiguous evil to instill a clarity of purpose in the pull of a trigger.

Rubbing the warding-marks on his wrists - those scars went all the way down to the bone, damn - Bruno studiously avoided looking at Dr. Clarkson and instead looked over at his granddaughter, laughing with the weirdly horned face of a demon. She’d surprised him in more ways than one, on this mission. First, she’d pulled herself completely to the fore of her avatar’s mind; he’d done it to Michael, and largely to Wazacowski , but the others seemed much more comfortable letting their avatars have the reins. Andi especially, or so it had seemed from his limited experience in the 20s where she had only stepped even a little forward in the last few minutes of the mission.

The second, even more surprising fact was that she’d come to the fore in her avatar to consult with _him_ about their strategy for infiltrating the chateau. Bruno had never really been the one making the plans. Oh he’d been in charge of making the plans work for thirty and more years, but making the plan? Not his department. There were always other, better men who co-ordinated the strategy, who would set the objectives and the priorities, men who had the rank to make people listen to them no matter how left-field their plan had turned out to be.

And that had been fine with Bruno. He was the blunt instrument, the boots on the ground that made sure everything happened the way it needed to, to finish the mission - though rarely the way it was supposed to. ‘According as circumstances are favorable, one should modify one’s plans’ after all, and Bruno knew through bitter experience what exactly it took to salvage even the most FUBAR of missions.

But then Andi had asked him. _Andi_ , not her avatar, and _him_ , _Bruno Hamilton_ , not Sgt. Wazacowski . It wasn’t his area of expertise, he’d never been asked about such things before, and he was already overwhelmed with trying to keep track of all this piloting business. But. She’d asked him. Not Wells, not Dr. Clarkson. Him.

She was his granddaughter, and he would have been damned if he’d started off by failing her as he had so abysmally failed her grandmother.

So he’d stepped up as best he knew how, drawing on the men he’d worked for and with in the past - Jaxun, Krieger, Thornton, and others - to try and cobble together some semblance of a plan. He’d started by categorizing their priorities, then their assets, and what had emerged had been…..a plan. A ramshackle Hail Mary of a plan - but a plan nonetheless. Papers and Wells’ Austrian avatar to get them through the gate and grounds, bluff through the door, contain casualties to the house to avoid witnesses, destroy the lab, grab TOM.

The look of warm gratitude on Andi’s face as she’d faded back to let her avatar do the necessary deeds had been….something. Another surprise, certainly. Bruno wasn’t sure what, yet, it was, but the memory of it redoubled the feeling of warm satisfaction in his chest from a job well done and he had to smile as the lady demon and Andi nearly fell off their seat laughing at Aquamarine’s attempts to get Dr. Clarkson to put the lab coat back on.

In the end, the plan had gone off almost to a T. Neither gate guards nor the doormen looked closely enough at the forged papers or those wielding them to hinder their progress, and Wells’ timely silence spell had allowed them to end the inner guards before they’d had a chance to set off any alarms. Bruno’d been on supply runs that had gone worse than this.

Their luck couldn’t hold forever, of course, and the demon had been a nasty surprise. Bruno had felt his avatar surging to the front with the absolute confidence of someone who knew exactly how to deal with the situation in front of him, and Bruno had taken his cue from Andi and…let him. Sgt. Wazacowski had known exactly what to do to overload the summoning circle and blow the Nazi protection and control runes all to Hell, and the following chase to catch TOM had been as confusing as it was anti-climatic.

Bruno shivered and rubbed his arms. The warding-marks were weird, but the feeling of fur and distinctly inhuman bone structures were somehow worse. Not to mention the wild abandon he’d felt while chasing the car; for one almost sickening second the chase was more important than the mission, than the capture, than _Andi_. He shook his head to dislodge the memory, quietly thanking every single one of his lucky stars not to have been put in that avatar full-time. The heightened senses and strength were not worth the loss of control he’d felt, the complete upset to his objectives hierarchy.

Finding himself back in Sgt. Wazacowski standing less than seven feet from the truck had been disorienting, but the return of the other man’s more familiar way of thinking was a comfort Bruno didn’t have words for. It was like sobering up without the hangover, a fact for which he could only be grateful.

And now here they were. TOM was in custody, Dr. Clarkson was indulging her avatar’s mischievous tendencies, Wells was patching up the more obviously gaping holes in Yannic, and Aquamarine and the demon were egging on Dr. Clarkson. A job well done, by any definition.

As the brilliant white light gathered, Bruno closed his eyes and surrendered to the pull willingly. It was time to see what had happened in their absence.


End file.
